Online traders brace for record-breaking Christmas

It might smell like an exclusive French perfumery but the airy warehouse in West Brunswick – home to online beauty retailer Adore Beauty – is a little less glamorous.

Rather, the concrete floor of the two-storey building is strewn with hundreds of shoe box-size cartons filled with assorted beauty products and handfuls of biodegradable polystyrene beans, and dozens of Australia Post crates piled high with yellow express packages.

Adore Beauty director Katie Morris at her West Brunswick warehouse. Photo: Jason South

In another corner, dozens of boxes carrying cosmetics and fragrances are waiting to be scanned and sorted on to large industrial shelves.

Ducking and weaving between them are a team of so-called "pickers and packers" – casual staff working around the clock to dispatch up to 1000 orders a day to tens of thousands of online Christmas shoppers.

It is a scene being played out in thousands of retail warehouses across the country in the lead-up to what is expected to be Australia's biggest ever e-Christmas.

E-commerce leaders PayPal and eBay predict Sunday will be Australia's busiest online shopping day and the week following to be our peak online shopping week.

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Ebay predicts 2.3 million Australians will visit its website on Sunday and buy 390,000 items, or 200 items per minute – up 17 per cent on the busiest online shopping day last year.

Adore Beauty director Kate Morris says the 13-year-old company recorded its highest number of online orders in a single day on Tuesday and expects that record to be broken again over the coming week.

"We received over 1000 orders on Tuesday and we are expecting similar volumes in the weeks leading up to Christmas," says Ms Morris, who typically receives 500 to 600 orders a day.

She says her daily pre-Christmas orders are double what they were a year ago and to cater for the demand she has doubled her warehouse and customer service staff. Other retailers such as department stores and online electronics giant Kogan are also reporting casual staff increases of up to 50 per cent.

But retailers are not the only ones scaling up in the lead-up to Christmas.

The flow-on effect is widespread, with web hosting services, Australia Post and courier companies all increasing staff and services to cope with the e-commerce boom.

"This year is going to be our busiest Christmas ever," says Australia Post's executive general manager of parcel and express services Richard Umbers. "Already we are trading significantly ahead of last year, which is of course being driven by online shopping. At the peak, we expect to handle 1 million parcels a day."

Australia Post, with about 80 per cent of Australia's e-commerce parcel market, will have 10,000 vehicles on the roads, including vans, trucks, motorcycles and bicycles, and 12,000 posties working seven days a week.

Courier companies are also doubling their warehouse distribution staff and drivers. Fastway Couriers, for example, will add an extra 100 drivers to its national network of 700 just for the peak Christmas period.

But it is not just our roads that will be busier. Australia's largest freight mover, Toll Group, which has about 10 per cent of the e-commerce parcel delivery market, says as well as making more than 700,000 vehicle deliveries a week during December, it will operate 200 flights per day to 131 airports across Australia, with up to 20,000 kilograms of freight on each flight.

In addition to operating 48 freighter aircraft, Toll will also "utilise space on domestic Virgin Australia flights across the country", a spokesman said.

Australian Customs and Border Protection Service expects to process more than 7.5 million international mail parcels in December, which is its "busiest time of year for international mail imports", with shoppers increasingly looking to overseas retailers for Christmas gifts.

The service has seen posted items from overseas jump from 64.8 million in 2011-12 to 70.9 million in 2012-13.